


Five Houses James Didn’t Build (and One That He Did)

by vinebridge



Category: Sanditon (TV 2019)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Falling In Love, Female Friendship, Healing, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Canon, Regency
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28311585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinebridge/pseuds/vinebridge
Summary: Seasons passed. Crowds dispersed. Charlotte learned to create things that last.
Relationships: Charlotte Heywood & Georgiana Lambe, Charlotte Heywood & Sidney Parker, Charlotte Heywood/James Stringer, Lord Babington/Esther Denham
Comments: 22
Kudos: 40
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [useyourtelescope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/useyourtelescope/gifts).



> Many thanks to **useyourtelescope** for your inspiring prompts and love for the characters. This story started from ideas of "drawing practice / competency" and then grew in unexpected directions, but I hope it's still enjoyable to you.

**Miss Heywood’s Papier-Mâché Workshop**

The shift was gradual but sure, in the fashion the salt in the seaside air might weather away marble façades and statues. As Mr. and Mrs. Heywood noted, after their eldest daughter returned home from a summer in Sanditon, she became much quieter and subdued.

Two incidents came to pass that autumn: A step leading to the cottage’s second floor crumbled one afternoon; Charlotte read a pamphlet on how to soak and boil waste paper to make shapable pulp.

Over the weeks healing in bed from a broken ankle, with her sister Alison’s help, Charlotte began to make little paper figurines to while away the time. Though her initial attempts for her younger siblings were pitiful—pale soldiers hobbling on crooked legs; proud princesses and sad gentlemen collapsed under the weight of their hats—Charlotte’s fingers kept on moving, as teased by Mr. Heywood, the way they never did for her needlework.

After completing a respectable Nativity set in time for Christmas, looking at the elaborate paper barn and manger from her own hands, Charlotte discovered within her an inclination towards miniature houses and furniture. 

Then she realized, as if remembering from an evaporating dream: Once upon a time, she had been amazed by a pristine white model of an entire coast town in the making, in a gentleman’s study far away. On a breezy summer morning, a surprised smile crossed a young man’s careworn face, when she pointed out his intent behind a array of gently sloping roofs leading to an open view of the sea.

She asked for more rags and tatters, spare wires and paints, setting about creating more.

How wondrous it is, Charlotte thought, to be able to build whole and beautiful things out of matters that appeared ruined for good.

**Nursery for Lady Babington’s Firstborn**

Like many things from that particular summer, Lady Susan’s interest in Charlotte eventually, understandably waned. The Lady still kept her promise, inviting Charlotte to visit her and stay in London in the following spring, but there was always an distracted air about her the few times they managed to sit together and converse.

“Fickle was the favor of the Prince,” surmised Georgiana when Charlotte brought up the issue, in one of their letters flitting back and forth between the capital and the seaside town. “To pirouette on that delicate partiality demanded a topping balancing act, even for as extraordinary a dancer as Lady Susan.”

Was there a bitter note of sympathy in Georgiana’s words? As tacit silence on the topics of Mr. Molyneux and the second Mr. Parker continued, Charlotte could not help but wonder.

It was in such a strange, reflective mood, high on a secluded balcony at one of Lady Susan’s famed night gatherings, Charlotte came across the first familiar figure from Sanditon.

It was Lady Babington, resplendent in a green brocade gown, listening attentively to another gentleman. As Charlotte watched in wonderment, Lady Babington threw her head back and laughed, her posture open like fresh leaves of March. Among the dark rustling trees, in the partial light cast by low-hanging lanterns, her titian hair shimmered like flickering flame.

She was visibly with child.

The gentleman beside her turned to wrap a shawl properly around the Lady’s shoulders. When they walked away from Charlotte’s field of view, she saw it was Lord Babington, a genuine smile on his worldly face. 

Back in the days, when Lady Babington was still known as Miss Esther Denham, a sullen sister to the now late Sir Edward and a reluctant niece to the Lady of the town, Charlotte often likened her, in secrecy, to an ivy-choked gothic fortress from the novels of Mrs. Whitby’s lending library: barbed, gloomy, and forever guarded. Only after Esther’s flight out of the feast at her brother’s venomous taut, Charlotte recognized the error in her judgement: Miss Denham was no fortress nor a looming spectre, but a treasure trapped and jealously hoarded for years.

And yet, on this warm spring night, a great distance from her aunt, half-brother, and Sanditon, Lady Babington was aglow.

Charlotte was again reminded of that particular glow, walking pass the doorway of a refined millinery shop a few days later. Caught by the timbre of the young shopkeeper’s voice, she turned and found Miss Clara Brereton, explaining to a customer the finer details of a hat design. 

Through the clear display window, in a modest yellow dress, Miss Brereton looked slightly thinner than Charlotte last laid eyes on her, right before her sudden eviction from Lady Denham’s manor. But after the alleged fall from grace, somehow she seemed much more vivid and defined, as if an invisible weight was lifted, a layer of dust shaken, allowing her intrinsic luster to take the foreground and reveal itself, unsullied, untarnished.

A thin ray of sunlight shifted on a copper button on Charlotte’s coat. The young woman framed in the shop window lifted her head, her eyes meeting Charlotte’s.

For a moment, a variety of shadows flitted across that beautiful face—traces of shame, resentment, an incipient urge for disguise and denial—until they settled into the tightening of a corner of her mouth. Then, as if having made a decision, Clara nodded at Charlotte.

Charlotte nodded back. 

Before Charlotte decided whether to enter the shop for a proper conversation, Clara’s entire expression softened. She was looking past Charlotte.

Charlotte turned around. A naval officer, in his early thirties perhaps, was standing right behind her. He politely excused himself, hobbling past Charlotte into the shop, a posy of primroses in his grasp. The wound on his leg must be recent, judged from his unskilled maneuver of his cane, but he valiantly marched on, his eyes only for Clara.

_Oh._

When Charlotte finally returned to the Heywood cottage a week later, she noticed that during her leave, the paper princess and soldier on her windowsill had somehow propped each other up, unexpectedly enduring in the still crisp wind.


	2. Chapter 2

**Miss Lambe’s School for Native Sons and Daughters**

“Charlotte, it’s been far too long!” exclaimed Georgiana, a fast-approaching vision of loveliness in cornflower blue. “For a fleeting moment, I worried that you wouldn’t have come.”

Charlotte marched forward to grip the fine brown hands in hers. “How could I not, knowing you’re leaving?”

When the two young women sat down on the hill overlooking Sanditon, talking and listening in turns on a sun-drenched patch of grass, more than two years had passed since they first met. It was the eve of the formal opening ceremony of the town, to celebrate the accomplishment of rebuilding efforts after the devastating fire. Colorful banners had been tied to lamp posts. Lupines and hollyhocks stood high in full blossom in public gardens. There was no trace detectable to indicate the disaster that claimed the elder Stringer’s life.

On the edge of the increasingly populated town, the sea was still there.

“Have you any plans in mind once you return to Antigua?”

“Start a school of my own, perhaps,” said Georgiana.

“A school?”

“See, over the past year, I have been contemplating how I am to use my inheritance once the time comes. I came to realize that I will never fit in the Ton.” A sardonic smile appeared on her face. “Nor do I particularly wish to, to tell the truth.” 

Charlotte touched Georgiana’s hand briefly, yet kept her silence.

“It’s not feasible to abolish all sugar mills and boiling houses on the island, at least for now, but Otis …” A slight pause. “ _Mr. Molyneux’s_ personal experience taught me it’s possible to initiate the groundwork of that change for the children. To teach them to read, and give them tools. Then … there might well be more options for them than it used to be for my mother.”

Charlotte smiled at Georgiana, seeing her friend’s hesitancy melting away. “I think it is the most admirable plan, and you, the most admirable woman I have the pleasure to know.” 

A companionable silence fell between them. When Charlotte spoke again, she was looking at the glistening waves in the distance, the subtle yet ineliminable division between heaven and sea; anywhere but at her friend.

“Has Mr. Molyneux ever attempted to contact you, in the past two years?”

“Yes, he wrote to me once, meaning to apologize for his previous misconduct, but I did not answer. He knew well as I did that the trust had been undone between us. For all that we shared, hoped, and wept, it was in the past.”

Charlotte did not respond. Or she simply could not.

“Mr. Sidney has come for the ceremony as well, Charlotte.”

Almost imperceptibly, Charlotte nodded. “He could never do otherwise for his brother.”

“And this was the foremost reason I wasn’t sure if I should ask you to come. However, one thing I must say: For all I doubted his moral standing and character, in all the weeks following the fire that destroyed Sanditon and the Parkers’ hopes, he never once asked to borrow my inheritance under his care to pay off his brother’s construction debts.”

“Like you said, Georgiana, Mr. Sidney Parker is now a married man; what understanding we had, or what I thought we had, was all in the past.” Charlotte exhaled. “Let us not speak of this again.”

On their way back through the market to Georgiana’s residence, soon to be sold for another owner, someone called out Charlotte’s name: 

“—Miss Heywood, Miss Heywood! Please hold up!”

**Lady Denham’s Glass Greenhouse**

“I thought it was you, Miss. Ever so glad to have you back,” the young man in workers' clothes grinned. 

“You are … Mr. Robinson, correct?” Charlotte smiled. “I remember, you were a good friend to Mr. Stringer. He is well, I presume? Will I see you both at tomorrow’s ceremony?”

“Fred’s the name, Miss. As for good old James, he’s doing well enough, but ’m afraid he’ll not be there on the morrow. Soon as the main rebuilding work was done, he went off to London for his apprenticeship under that famed architect, leaving me as the foreman here to deal with rest of the niggling details, that wretched fellow. Haven’t seen him for a whole three months and a half, either … Still, he left this for you before he went, Miss Heywood.” 

From one of his numerous pockets, Fred produced a small paper packet tied with a bright red thread.

“Thank you, Fred. It was most kind of you both.” Charlotte carefully shook the packet. Its content was of some weight and sharp angles. Stone, or metal; probably a miniature statue of some sort.

So Young Stringer did eventually go after his dream, after two long years of self-imposed atonement for his father’s untimely death. Charlotte was most happy for him. She did.

She did not pause to examine the strange pang in her chest, hearing about the news. She managed a smile.

“I have not been back for years. Was there any curious new feature Miss Lambe and I should visit while in town?”

Fred took off his cap, and scratched his hair. “Well, to begin with, we put up a proper memorial plaque for the late elder Stringer—with Mr. Parker’s approval, of course—up on the wall of the rebuilt Terrace where, you know, the fire started.”

“I see. That’s very good of you,” Charlotte said quietly.

“Least we could do for James and his poor dad.” Fred shrugged. “Oh, and Lady Denham commissioned a glass structure to be built on her ground. Apparently a fashionable thing to do for people of the Ton. The lot of them all had more fortune than sense, if I might say so myself. It’s almost done, quite a sight on a fine sunny day. Worth a look at. Words had it that it’s meant to be a greenhouse; the Lady apparently wished to grow tropical plants and fruits inside—orchids, a few palm trees, and something called ‘pineapple,’ though I’ve no notion what that is.”

Charlotte and Georgiana looked at each other, and burst into laughter.

At dawn of the festival day, when the dew still lingered on the grass, Charlotte left the house alone. It was early; not a soul in sight at the new public green but chirping finches and skylarks among the trees. She sat down on a bench under an oak, untying the gift from Mr. Stringer.

Wrapped in sheets of drafting paper was a small elegant pagoda, carved from a pale pink rock. Charlotte lifted it to the light, inspecting the golden flecks and veins in the layers, and thought about the stonemason’s son who wanted nothing more in the world than becoming an architect.

There was also a note in the packet. A few lines were written in a neat hand:

> Miss Heywood, 
> 
> Please do me the honor of keeping this design, in the hope that one day we might see it built and realized. 
> 
> With my deepest gratitude and admiration, 
> 
> James Stringer

Charlotte leaned back against the embrace of the tree, eyes closed. She could smell faint salt in the wind. It had been many months, almost a lifetime ago, since she was entangled with feelings this conflicted.

She did not know how long she had been sitting there, when, from the edge of her consciousness, she heard the sounds of someone approaching. A man, judged from the heavy tread. The steps stilled before her.

“—Miss Heywood, may we talk?” 

Charlotte did not open her eyes. She knew who it was. Perhaps she had been expecting him, all along.


	3. Chapter 3

**The London Residence of Mr. Sidney Parker, Chief Magistrate**

They walked together along the seaside. The flagstone promenade stretched out before them, giving the impression of being infinite in a certain slant of light. Whithersoever Charlotte’s eyes roamed, there were signs of development on priorly uncultivated lands: the half-filled shopfronts; the waiting vendor carts; the grand playhouse dreaming for a visiting troupe; and the immaculate Terrace in the distance, the brightest jewel in the crown. 

_How much had been transformed in a mere twenty-four months,_ Charlotte thought. Sanditon was a held breath, forever expectant, perpetually unfulfilled.

For an extended period, as the town rousing around them, neither of them spoke.

“How are you? And how is Mrs. Parker?” 

“My wife is with our newborn son in London,” he answered steadily. “They are both well.”

Charlotte let this piece of news sink in like a crystal shard, testing its edges, seeing how it felt. She did not comment on the dodged half of her question, as a courtesy to him for not asking it of her in the first place. She suspected neither of them was yet certain enough to answer. 

Instead she said: “Congratulations. Have Mr. Tom and Mrs. Mary met him yet?”

“Thank you. He is certainly loud enough to be a Parker. No, they have not, though they do plan to visit with Arthur and Diana in a fortnight, after business here is concluded.”

“What did you name him?”

“His name is Simon.”

As if some invisible valve had been turned, from then on their conversation flowed much easier. In an open manner that Charlotte had used to wish for them yet never came to pass, they spoke of family gossips, idle thoughts, all the minute things presently occupying their lives and minds. From time to time, Sidney would tilt his head, considering her opinion as well as his own response, the way he rarely did in the singular summer they spent together. 

She realized in wonder, in the past two years, Sidney had changed, too, slowed down and anchored by the responsibilities and burdens of a family man, a way of life his elder brother had tried too hard to advocate and he used to resent.

Charlotte’s thoughts drifted to the paper constructs of which she had made her personal projects. She weighed the idea of telling Sidney about them, about the nascent plans taking shape in her heart, but somehow the words never came. Now that he was the lawful confidant of another woman, it felt oddly wrong to divulge to him, making him the first one to know.

As she puzzled over her own reluctance, Sidney grew quieter as the end of the promenade was within sight. Finally he came to a halt and turned to her, expression grave.

“Miss Heywood, allow me to apologize for my abject behavior the last time you were here. I had used you most wretchedly; it was cruel of me, to say the least, to force your validation the day we parted. I wish I could have been a better man to deserve your regard.”

“—Thank you, though I do understand you were placed in an unenviable position,” Charlotte replied slowly, her words carefully selected. “Under duress and severe time constraints, you made a sensible decision to save your own brother from ruins. I know you are never one who shirks familial duties.”

He gazed at her for a while, then huffed out a laugh. When he spoke again, his voice was warm. “In our early acquaintance, you were also quick to describe me as ‘sensible’.”

She grinned. “And Sir, you were so infuriated by that remark.”

“So this is your final verdict of my character, Madam? Very well, ‘sensible’ I would own, but I shall bow to you when situation calls for someone wise.” 

Charlotte examined his half-mocking smile, his fierce countenance, his unblinking gaze. His resignation and forbearance, above all. Her initial assessment of him turned out to be fairly accurate: Out of the three Parker brothers, he was, and forever should be, the sensible one. His pain and ambition in youth drove him far into the West Indies, out of the rolling hills and domestic comfort of England; in his prime years, when all hopes seemed to be exhausted, his calculation and guilt made him stay. The fire only instigated the process, not generated it out of thin air.

 _We are all of us the product of our own creation, and this is a complex, self-made man._ Be it on the island of Antigua, or at the core of Sanditon, no one else should understood better, and be ever vigilant against, the insatiate hunger for more. Not Tom. Not Lady Denham. Only Sidney. Charlotte could easily imagine him as a town magistrate, or rising even higher somewhere, far down the road. 

She recalled Georgiana’s words, that even when entrapped in Tom’s failed venture and scheme, Sidney had never made any demands on Georgiana’s inheritance when acting as her guardian. In the same vein of his swift London rescue of his ward, no one could recognize hints of exploitation and clutches of greed faster than Sidney, because he himself had been struggling against such all his life.

After all was said and done, Sidney Parker was a good man.

Charlotte smiled. “I wish you happiness with all my heart, Mr. Parker.”

“And I you, Miss Heywood,” he answered in kind. 

She was surprised to discover, at long last, they both meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more house left to build!
> 
> My sincere thanks for all your understanding and support. Here’s to a more hopeful and forgiving 2021, everyone.


End file.
